Why does the Catholic Church oppose gender transitions?

April 13, 2024 By Richard Ostling

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER: Talk about timeliness for a church pronouncement. On April 8, the Vatican’s doctrine office issued a broad-gauged “declaration,” approved by Pope Francis after five years of work, that contained new moral denunciations of what it called “gender theory” and resulting “sex change” treatments. The very next day, science weighed in, as British medical journals reported such devastating research findings that the National Health Service has halted gender transition treatments for children and teen-agers. There’ve been other... Read more

Why so many splits in the Latter-day Saints tradition?

March 30, 2024 By Richard Ostling

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THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER: History was made this month when The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (“LDS”) paid a rival denomination $192.5 million to purchase the faith’s first temple in Kirtland, Ohio, along with other properties and sacred manuscripts. The buyer and seller are the two largest among 68 branches that have emerged from U.S. Prophet Joseph Smith, Jr.’s latter-day revelations between 1830 and 1844. The Utah-based LDS church (which rejected its familiar “Mormon” nickname in 2018) is... Read more

What do U.S. churches believe on “recreational” marijuana?

March 16, 2024 By Richard Ostling

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THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER: All the buzz after President Biden’s State of the Union address ignored his boast about “directing my Cabinet to review the federal classification of marijuana.” Since 1970, the federal government has designated marijuana, a.k.a. cannabis, as a dangerous Schedule I drug alongside ecstasy, heroin, and LSD, therefore outlawing manufacture, distribution or possession, except for qualified research. But prodded by the President, the Health and Human Services department in 2022 launched a review and last August 29... Read more

“What Is Christian Nationalism, Exactly?”

March 2, 2024 By Richard Ostling

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THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER: That pertinent question above was the headline with David French’s February 26 New York Times column, which lamented confused definitions of the movement known as “Christian nationalism” (hereafter abbreviated as CN). The past few weeks have seen assorted articles pro and con, political squabbles, new public opinion polling, and even a Hollywood documentary. Here are aspects of recent attempts to understand and define this controversial movement. The CN term is mostly defined and applied by outside... Read more

Why does the Catholic Church condemn surrogate motherhood?

February 17, 2024 By Richard Ostling

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THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER: They say Pope Francis is Catholicism’s most liberal leader in modern times. So there was some surprise January 8 when he declared that nations should outlaw the morally “deplorable” practice of surrogate motherhood to produce human children. He said surrogacy “represents a grave violation of the dignity of the woman and the child” and “a child is always a gift and never the basis of a commercial contract,” asserting the fundamental belief that human life must... Read more

Should Christians attend LGBT weddings?

February 3, 2024 By Richard Ostling

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THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER: Many readers, including regular churchgoers, may be perplexed that this question is even being asked. Whatever their own concept of marriage, they’ll feel that accepting a wedding invitation is a matter of basic courtesy and kindness. Moreover, Pew Research Center polling after the Supreme Court ruling on this shows 61% of U.S. Catholics and 66% of “Mainline” Protestants accept legalized same-sex marriage. And a much-debated December edict from Pope Francis’s Vatican now allows priests to offer... Read more

Will the Catholic Church allow married priests? Should it?

January 18, 2024 By Richard Ostling

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THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER: The new year began with the surprise revival of this perennial issue by a prominent Catholic insider who asserted that the mandate for priests to be unmarried and celibate “was optional for the first millennium of the Church’s existence and it should become optional again.” This came in a media interview with Archbishop Charles Scicluna, 63, named by Pope Francis in 2015 to lead the church in the nation of Malta. As he indicated, celibacy... Read more

Is it time to rename the Southern Baptist Convention?

January 4, 2024 By Richard Ostling

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THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER: As it looks toward the annual meeting in June, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), by far America’s largest Protestant denomination, faces difficult issues. What tactics might halt its recent membership decline? Should women be forbidden clergy ordination even as assistants, educators, or chaplains? What steps might soothe racial tensions? Are churches too political this election year? And most important, how can the SBC cleanse itself from sexual abuse scandals? With all that’s going on, one matter... Read more

Why does the Catholic Church spurn Masonic lodges?

December 19, 2023 By Richard Ostling

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THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER It probably perplexed some people, Catholics included, when the Vatican declared November 13 that Masonic lodge membership by a church member is “forbidden because of the irreconcilability between Catholic doctrine and Freemasonry.” The announcement reaffirmed Rome’s 1983 declaration that a Catholic who joins the group is “in a state of grave sin and may not receive Holy Communion.” That earlier statement was issued to clarify this penalty because the new revision of the Code of Canon... Read more

Should people who’ve shed Christian beliefs celebrate Christmas anyway?

December 7, 2023 By Richard Ostling

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THE RELIGION GUY’S RESPONSE: The quandary above is not posed by The Guy himself but by Keith Giles in a December 5 piece titled “Deconstructing Christmas,” one of his Progressive Christian columns for the multi-faith site patheos.com. Giles departed from his career as the pastor of a conventional church and now participates in an anonymous “house church” with no salaried staff. For purposes of this article, what’s pertinent about the writer is his vocation of encouraging people in the process... Read more